'Banished' Day-Lewis is glad to have the look of the Irish

Deirdre Reynolds

January 06 2008 04:48 AM

HE is one of England's most famous exports, but actor Daniel Day-Lewis has revealed that he'd much rather be Irish.

The Oscar-winning star, whose father was Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis, grew up in a quintessential middle-class English family. But a childhood visit to Ireland when he was just four sparked a love affair with the country.

The actor and his sister Tamasin toured the west coast every summer with their Irish-born dad, who died of cancer. And he reckons it changed his life and career forever.

He said: "From the day we arrived here, my sense of Ireland's importance has never diminished. Just the sound of the West of Ireland in a person's voice can affect me deeply.

"But, truly, there's a quality of wildness that exists in Ireland that coincides with utter solitude. This place has always contained the spell for me."

Day-Lewis, who won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Christy Brown in My Left Foot, obtained an Irish passport in 1993. He currently lives in Wicklow with his director wife Rebecca Miller and their two sons.

But the Englishman, who's latest film There Will Be Blood hits cinemas here next month, confessed that he was seen as a turn-coat by his own.

"It is not expected that someone from my background will leave England. But I've committed so many heresies that there's no sense in not making the final gesture.

"Where I come from, it was a heresy to say you wanted to be in movies, let alone American movies," Day-Lewis, who was inspired to become an actor after watching Robert de Niro in Taxi Driver, added.

"England is obsessed with where you come from, and they are determined to keep you in that place, be it in a drawing-room or in the gutter.

"The great tradition of liberalism in England is essentially a sponge that absorbs all possibility of change."

Despite being classically trained at the Bristol Old Vic, Day-Lewis refused to be typecast by playing snooty English gentleman or tortured Shakespearean anti-heroes.

Instead, he became famous for playing Irishmen in Jim Sheridan movies My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father and The Boxer. But the star says he couldn't care less if the roles he picks are seen as unpatriotic.

"I've managed to create a sense of banishment in so many different areas of my life. I live in Ireland, not England. I make films in America. And now I'm banished from the theatre because I've slagged it off so much. And I did the unspeakable thing of fleeing from Hamlet.

"I'm glad I did the theatrical work that I did, but it just wasn't for me. I'm a little bit perverse, and I just hate doing the thing that's the most obvious," he added.